Last Saturday afternoon in Haines, people were ordering food like normal at Alpenglow Woodfired Pizza, the town’s only pizza joint.
But things weren’t normal: it was the restaurant’s last day in business. The owner announced on Facebook early last week that the restaurant was shutting down with just five days’ notice, leaving the small town with even fewer dining options.
On the shop’s final day, pizza sold out well before closing time as folks sought out their final slices.
“I’m crushed,” said Julie Jones, who recently returned to Haines for the summer to work on the Chilkat River Bridge. “It’s hard to find something so well-crafted in Haines. The restaurant situation is a little grim here, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Al Badgley is local year-round.
“The pizza place is a great staple here we’ve had through the winter,” he said. “I feel that Haines has challenges in the wintertime keeping restaurants open, and I hope we can figure out how to get that taken care of.”
Haines’ winter dining options are incredibly limited. This year, aside from Alpenglow, only the Lighthouse Restaurant and Harbor Bar has consistently served dinner throughout the week.
Folks have a few more in-town options for breakfast and lunch. They include The Bamboo Room Restaurant, which is open on the weekends, plus two local cafes.
Struggling to stay afloat
In his Facebook video, Alpenglow Owner Nolan Woodard cited negotiations with the restaurant’s landlord over its lease as one of the main reasons for the closure.
“Sadly we were unable to come to a mutually beneficial lease agreement that I felt comfortable as a business owner signing,” he said.
In an interview after the announcement, Woodard reiterated that the lease was a factor in the decision. But he also said he was already struggling to stay afloat and has been behind on rent since January. The same thing happened last winter.
“I haven’t made money a single year that I’ve owned this business,” Woodard said.
He noted that revenue has gone up slightly over time. This January, for example, Alpenglow brought in more money than in January 2025. The same was true in February. But he said expenses, including food costs, have skyrocketed at the same time – eating into any potential growth.
Woodard figured selling beer and wine could help close that gap, but it’s been a years-long ordeal to get a license. Woodard said he was in the final stages of that process and wanted to give the restaurant more time to see if it would work.
“I would have done it for one more year,” he said. “I also would have very much gone into that one year with the understanding of, if I don’t see some large scale shift in revenue for my business, and some large scale economic shift for the way the Haines community operates, it’s probably going to be our last year.”
The situation got even more complicated last month when Alpenglow’s lease came up for renewal.
The new version came back with a few clauses that Woodard said he couldn’t get on board with. For instance, he and his landlord – Chris Thorgeson – disagreed on a clause that said the landlord could seize Woodard’s equipment if he was late on rent. They also disagreed about whether the landlord should be required to give advance notice before entering the property.
The pair negotiated, and Woodard said Thorgeson made some concessions, but ultimately they couldn’t come to an agreement.
“I was going to … have to rob Peter to pay Paul this week, just to keep it eking it out and limping along,” he said. “This was just the final thing that brought it to my attention that, you know what, it’s just not worth it.”
The landlord, Chris Thorgeson, declined an interview request when reached by phone on Tuesday. But Thorgeson did weigh in on commentary by Travis Kukull, a local restaurant owner and president of the Haines Chamber of Commerce.
Kukull had slammed the lease terms in a Substack article, questioning Thorgeson’s business ethics and arguing that such leases are not well suited for small restaurants in small towns.
In the comment section, Thorgeson called the article “ignorant,” noted that Woodard was four months behind on rent, and emphasized the financial risk that landlords take on when they buy and fix up old buildings in Haines.
In an interview last week, Kukull said he didn’t have the full context when he wrote the article.
“Maybe I wrote a little too soon about it,” Kukull said. “But at the same time, it’s a conversation worth having about leases in this small town, and how to come up with a better paradigm for that.”
“How can we work together better as a community, to set it up where we can see more success stories in this town than failures?” he added.
Woodard, of Alpenglow, echoed that point.
“As much as I love this business and as much as I love the product we create, if I can’t pay my people and I can’t pay my bills, good pizza doesn’t matter,” he said.
